One of the pumps in our cross-flow filter failed about three weeks ago, and we have not been able to bottle since. We have a temporary fix on that pump until replacement parts arrive from Germany in early March. So, we are starting to catch up this
Read more →We bottled about 140 cases of Oskyfizzante Iowa White on Tuesday. This is a slow process because it is all done by hand. We can’t use our bottling line on fizzy wines. And, it is a two-step process because we have to fill the bottles, wait at
Read more →We are doing a bit of hand pruning when weather and other priorities permit. Adam’s goal is to get two rows of Marquette pruned each day. These vines have already been machine-pruned so these are the finishing touches. Our harvester has sprung a small oil leak. We
Read more →We are doing oil changes on a tractor and a Gator housed at Maple Woods Vineyard. We have also started researching additional vineyard mechanization. Our V-Mech pre-pruner does a good job but it requires three people to operate: one in the tractor and two on the V-Mech.
Read more →We bottled the 2022 Iowa Edelweiss on Wednesday and will be bottling our very popular Star Spangled White® over the next three weeks. We received more Concord and Cranberry juice this week and as soon as it warms up, we will start fermenting both batches of juice.
Read more →We always manage to break trellis posts during harvest and this week, we’ll try to get them all replaced. This is just hard work. We have to dig the base of the old post out and we slip a new post down in its place. Then we
Read more →The first question everyone asks at this time of year is this: How is the grape crop looking? Vines in all of our four vineyards have heavy fruit loads. In fact, I don’t remember a harvest that was looking this good by July 15. Keep in mind
Read more →Weather permitting, we are installing pencil rods (steel rods about ¼ inch in diameter) in several rows of Marquette that we’ve cut off at the ground. We will train the suckers that come up when the ground warms up in the spring up along the pencil rods
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We are bottling our first batch of the very popular Oskyfizzante® Cranberry this week. We have also just finished cold stabilizing a batch of American Steuben and will rack that wine off cream of tartar. We will get it bottled in the next week or so. Preventative
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Although the start of harvest is 2–4 weeks in the future, we are already thinking about steps we must take to be ready. We are doing preventative maintenance on machinery and equipment right now. We planted about 1,500 new vines this year and now is the time
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